Favorite Poem

Denise Levertov
Poet
Born: 24 October 1923
Died: 20 December 1997(complications from lymphoma)
Birthplace: Ilford, Essex, England
Best known as: The politically-active poet who wrote With Eyes at the Back of our Heads
Denise Levertov published her first book of poems in England in 1946. She married and moved to America in 1947, and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. In the 1960s she was poetry editor for The Nation, and in the 1970s she was poetry editor for Mother Jones. Though raised in Britain, she is widely considered an "American" poet, known for her political and social consciousness. Her published works include With Eyes at the Back of our Heads (1959), Jacob's Ladder (1962) and Relearning the Alphabet (1970).

BIOGRAPHY
Mary Oliver (b. 1935) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. She spent one year at Ohio State University and a second year at Vassar. Her distinctive poetic talent led to an appointment as the chair of the writing department of the Fine Arts Workshop in Provincetown, Massachusetts (1972-1973). Though she never graduated from college, she was awarded the Mather Visiting Professorship at Case Western Reserve University for 1980 and 1982, and, among her many awards and honors, she received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship (1972-1973) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (1980-1981).

The first of her several volumes of poems, No Voyage and Other Poems, appeared in 1963. Other books include New and Selected Poems (1992), A Poetry Handbook (1995), and Blue Pastures (1995), a collection of prose nature writing. One critic, commenting on her work, asserts that "her vision of nature is celebratory and religious in the deepest sense."

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) is arguably the most influential poet in the Spanish language. Born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in southern Chile to a teacher and a railroad foreman, the poet took on the name of a nineteenth-century Czech writer, Jan Neruda, in his teens, to conceal his writing pursuits from his disapproving father. He first published poetry in a magazine at age fourteen. In 1921, he moved from the countryside to Santiago, "with his head 'filled with books, dreams, and poems buzzing around like bees.'" (Roman, 33) By 1923, he had published his first book of poetry. His life as a starving poet changed when a friend with political connections got Neruda named as consul to Rangoon, just one site in a string of consulates before he returned to Chile in 1932. Despite growing popularity as a poet, he could not make a living at writing and so went back to consul work in Buenos Aires and then Madrid. In Madrid, Neruda sympathized with the Spanish people, Republicans, attempting to hold fast against the Fascists who were supported by Hitler and Mussolini. His loyalty to one side of the conflict got him removed from Madrid and placed in Paris where ultimately he was able to aid 2,000 Spanish refugees in reaching Chile. Much of Neruda's poetry reflected his sympathy for the people who fought fascism and lost. With the German invasion of Poland in 1940, Neruda was appointed consul general of Mexico where he continued the struggle for social justice. Disillusioned with Mexico's political conflicts, he returned home in 1943 and aligned himself with the Communists who impressed him as a solution to the struggle for social reform in Latin America. Neruda's tolerance for Communism was not looked upon with favor and he was forced into exile for a number of years eventually returning to Chile with amnesty, running for the presidency and then dropping out to support Salvador Allende's campaign. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1971 and died in Santiago in 1973, only days after Allende's death and the overthrow of the Popular Unity government.

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Neruda explained the connection between politics and poetry: "In the midst of the arena of America's struggles I saw that my human task was none other than to join the extensive forces of the organized masses of the people, to join with life and soul, with suffering and hope, but it is only from this great popular stream that the necessary changes can arise for writers and for nations . . . Lastly, I wish to say to the people of good will, to the workers, to the poets, that the whole future has been expressed in this line by Rimbaud: 'Only with a burning patience can we conquer the splendid City, which will give light, justice, and dignity to all mankind.' "

Countee Cullen was very secretive about his life. According to different sources, he was born in Louisville, Kentucy or Baltimore, Md. Cullen was possibly abandoned by his mother, and reared by a woman named Mrs. Porter, who was probably his paternal grandmother. Cullen once said that he was born in New York City - perhaps he did not mean it literally. Porter brought young Countee to Harlem when he was nine. She died in 1918. At the age of 15, Cullen was adopted unofficially by the Reverend F.A. Cullen, minister of Salem M.E. Church, one of the largest congregations of Harlem. Later Reverend Cullen became the head of the Harlem chapter of NAACP. His real mother did not contact him until he became famous in the 1920s.

As a schoolboy, Cullen won a citywide poetry contest and saw his winning stanzas widely reprinted. With the help of Reverend Cullen, he attended the prestigious De Witt Clinton High School in Manhattan. After graduating, he entered New York University, where his works attracted critical attention. Cullen's first collection of poems, COLOR (1925), was published in the same year he graduated from NYU. Written in a careful, traditional style, the work celebrated black beauty and deplored the effects of racism. The book included 'Heritage' and 'Incident', probably his most famous poems. 'Yet Do I Marvel', about racial identity and injustice, showed the influence of the literary expression of William Wordsworth and William Blake, but its subject was far from the world of their Romantic sonnets. The poet accepts that there is God, and 'God is good, well-meaning, kind', but he finds a contradiction of his own plight in a racist society: he is black and a poet.
A brilliant student, Cullen graduated from New York University Phi Beta Kappa. He attended Harvard, earning his masters degree in 1926. He worked as assistant editor for Opportunity magazine, where his column, 'The Dark Tower,' increased his literary reputation. Cullen's poetry collections THE BALLAD OF THE BROWN GIRL (1927) and COPPER SUN (1927) explored similar themes as Colour, but they were not so well received. Cullen's Guggenheim Fellowship of 1928 enabled him to study and write abroad. He married in April 1928 Nina Yolande Du Bois, daughter of W.E.B. DuBois, the leading black intellectual. At that time Yolande was involved romantically with a popular band leader. Between the years 1928 and 1934, Cullen travelled back and forth between France and the United States.

As a poet Cullen was conservative: he did not ignore racial themes, but based his works on the Romantic poets, especially Keats, and often used the traditional sonnet form. "Not writ in water nor in mist, / Sweet lyric throat, thy name. / Thy singing lips that cold death kissed / Have seared his own with flame." ('2. For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty') However, Cullen also enjoyed Langston Hughes's black jazz rhythms, but more he loved "the measured line and the skillful rhyme" of the 19th century poetry. After the early 1930s Cullen avoided racial themes. Cullen's later publications include ON THESE I STAND (1947), a collection of his favorite poems, and the play THE THIRD FOURTH OF JULY (publ. 1946). Cullen died of uremic poisoning in New York City on January 9, 1946. Private about his life, he left behind no autobiography.

At Burt Lake- Tom Andrews (1961-2001)
To disappear into the right words
and to be their meanings